Bioethanol - Periodic Table of Videos

Another video from our recent trip to Brazil - this time discussing the country's famed use of bioethanol as fuel.

The Professor finds everything is not as he expected.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ethanol
• bioethanol
• brazil
• sugar
• maize

[Surtak]

This sort of bio-fuels is absolutely RETARDED!!!

Sorry, but it is! The point on being carbon-neutral is great, sounds fantastic. The part where it takes up huge tracts of land that are needed to produce foodstuffs is the retarded bit. You can't realistically provide enough of the stuff without starving.

[huryfaca]

@themightychickens That's not so true. Brasil got alot of agricolture surfaces,8% of all is used for sugarcane and only 1% of sugacane is used to produce bioethanol. So no rainforest is burn't down cuz of that. Problems are cows cuz they need alot more surfaces for grass etc.

[CertifiedBad4ss]

@Surtak If you are starving because your country produces bioethanol, you deserve to starve.

[GeekProdigyGuy]

@Surtak Cellulosic fiber does not require extra "cellulose crops." ALL crops already have cellulose in them that we don't utilize anyways. Just by converting the plant waste that we already churn out in massive amounts can produce billions of gallons of cellulosic ethanol.

It's fairly viable IF the U.S. took out the subsidies from sugar-based ethanol and gasoline, and put it towards cellulosic ethanol. It produces competitively priced fuel from material that we already have too much of.

[Surtak]

@GeekProdigyGuy

Eh, not really no. You're still using a lot of farmland, labour and resources to grow it in the first place. It's LESS wasteful than for instance corn, but it's still ot viable.

[GeekProdigyGuy]

@Surtak "This sort" is, because it uses foodstuffs for fuel. But in the video, cellulosic ethanol is mentioned. The majority of a plant's composition is cellulose, and millions of tons of biowaste containing cellulose are thrown away each year. Assuming more funding was put into research, it might be profitable to sell cellulosic ethanol at $2/gallon (same energy/dollar as $3/gallon gasoline), while getting rid of a lot of biowaste, and decreasing greenhouse emissions by 85%.

[marksp]

The biggest mistake of this video is that pure unleaded gas isn't sold at the pumps. Ethanol is mixed in the gasoline in large quantities. So you either by a higher or a lower concentration of Ethanol, but you are always buying at least 20% of ethanol no matter what.

[AllAroundBang]

Algae farms! ^_^

[Surtak]

@Jebus495

Shame, space cake is the only way I'd eat stuff made of hemp :P

[Jebus495]

@Surtak Not at all. Hemp grown for industrial purposes is usually less than 0.3% thc or less. 4% is low enough to experience no effect whatsoever. The proteins is what we're afta sah

[Surtak]

@Jebus495

Hemp food....are you suggestiong we all eat space cake sah?!

[Jebus495]

@Surtak Actually, Hemp seed is touted as a health food. It's better than soybean and can be used for all the same things. Hemp can contain up to 50% of it's total weight in seeds. Growing hemp leaves the soil loose and ready for more crops so in climates without harsh winters you can drop more crops. It's not like we're out of farm lands... Hemp is a robust plant that can be grown in any climate that doesn't have snow all year. Hemp CAN realistically provide us with all the fuel we need.